British American Tobacco - Developing less risky products

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Developing less risky products

To help people understand the level of toxicants different products emit, they can be placed on a risk continuum based on current evidence:

HIGHLEVEL OF TOXICANTSLOW

Tobacco products that involve no combustion

Nicotine products that contain no tobacco and involve no combustion

Tobacco products that involve no combustion

Nicotine products that contain no tobacco and involve no combustion

Conventional Cigarettes

Tobacco Heating Products (THPs)

Low‑toxicant Smokeless Tobacco

Vapour Products (e‑cigarettes)

Licensed Medicinal Products

Conventional Cigarettes

Cigarettes are so harmful because burning tobacco generates toxicants in the smoke. Inhaling these smoke toxicants is the cause of smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer.

Tobacco Heating Products (THPs)

These devices heat tobacco to release the nicotine, but not at a high enough temperature to burn it. This results in far lower levels of toxicants.

Low‑toxicant Smokeless Tobacco

Snus is a type of oral tobacco commonly used in Sweden. It is proven by long‑term, independent health studies to be significantly less harmful than smoking.

Vapour Products (e‑cigarettes)

Devices such as e‑cigarettes that contain no tobacco and deliver nicotine to the user in the form of vapour. Many respected scientists estimate them to be around 95% less harmful than smoking.

Licensed Medicinal Products

These are nicotine products that have met strict medicinal standards to be authorised as a medicine by the relevant national regulator.

We are committed to researching, developing and commercialising less risky alternatives to regular cigarettes. For society, less risky alternatives have the potential to reduce smoking-related disease, while also being an area of commercial growth for our business.

We have invested significant time, funds and resources into developing high-quality Next Generation Products. We have made considerable progress in building our range and expanding into new markets.

Vapour Products (e-cigarettes)

In 2013, we were the first international tobacco company to launch a Vapour Product (e-cigarette) – Vype – in the UK. Since then, we have used our experience and insights to develop the range with new devices, such as the Vype ePen, eTank and eBox. By the end of 2016, our Vype range was available across other markets including, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Colombia, Guatemala, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Philippines.

In December 2016 we opened our first Vype-branded store – in Milan, Italy – at the same time as launching a new type of Vapour Product, Vype Pebble.

Tobacco Heating Products

In 2015, we launched our first Tobacco Heating Product, iFuse, in Romania. This electronic device heats a nicotine-containing liquid into an inhalable vapour, which then passes through a tobacco section, delivering tobacco flavour to the consumer.

In November 2016, we announced the launch of glo in Japan. Similar to a cigarette, but with reduced risk potential, glo heats rather than burns tobacco, producing around 90% less toxicants* than a conventional cigarette.

Snus

We currently sell snus in Sweden and Norway through our Fiedler & Lundgren snus business, which dates back to the 1700s.

In July 2017, British American Tobacco p.l.c. (BAT) acquired the remaining 57.8% of Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) that BAT did not already own. RAI’s operating company R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company markets Camel Snus, the leading snus product in the US.

Licensed Medicinal Products

In 2014, we became the first tobacco company to have a nicotine inhalation product – Voke – licensed as a medicine. However, at the beginning of 2017 we announced that our main focus and priority in the rapidly evolving NGP category would be on Vapour and Tobacco Heating Products. As a result, we assigned all rights to the Voke brand and transferred all product and manufacturing-related intellectual property to Kind Consumer, the company we originally licenced the Voke technology from. Under this new agreement, Kind Consumer will be fully responsible for Voke’s future development.

* This is a comparison between the smoke from combusted tobacco in a standard 3R4F reference cigarette (approximately 9 mg tar), and the vapour from heated tobacco in glo, in terms of the 9 types of harmful components which the World Health Organization recommends to reduce.